I had a chance to play Ghost Squad during SEGA’s Winter Wonderland (see our hands-on preview), but didn’t really spend enough time with it to offer much in the way of a preview. Ghost Squad is a light gun style arcade shooter that can make use of the new Wii Zapper. But gimmicky shooting device or not, is this game fun?

The game doesn’t look like much. Like so many Wii games, this title’s graphics feel sub-Xbox. Sound also is not terribly impressive. It’s not horrible; for example, you’ll hear gunfire at the right times, squad commands, etc. But it’s just not something that you’ll come to Ghost Squad for.

The tone of the story line feels really out of place. You’re supposed to be carrying out daredevil missions, as part of a special forces unit. Your elite squad is in charge of taking down terrorists without leaving a trace. There’s even one where you save the President on Air Force One.

This would work in a Call of Duty 4-style game (see our review), one which focuses on realism at every corner. Ghost Squad is, in all other ways, not realistic at all. Besides the minimal graphics, you’ll notice that dead terrorists disappear, there’s not realistic blood or dying effects, and your colored reticule floats around the screen a little less precisely than you’d hope.

Despite what seems like a slew of negatives, the game is actually a lot of fun. Ghost Squad nails the light gun shooter genre, by having plenty of baddies pop up all over the place and awarding points based on the kind of shooting you do. You don’t need to look around; the game moves you to the places you need to go. And sometimes there are multiple places you can go–so you get to choose.

All told, Ghost Squad is worth a try for just about anyone who owns a Wii. It is a shooter, but the action is so arcade-like that people turned off by violence won’t even be troubled by it. It’s not a very realistic shooter, and that might bother the most hardcore, but the ease of shooting (point and fire) will provide plenty of trigger-happy action.